Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [95]
“This is actually part of a series where Oprah tours historic atrocity sites:
‘Oprah Goes Beach Blanket Bosnia on Thursday!’
‘Hey Ho Hiroshima! Oprah learns the difference between sushi and sashimi—oh, and a little something about radiation poisoning on Friday!’ ”
Unfortunately, the interview Oprah conducted with Elie Wiesel on that trip was, in the estimation of frontpagemag.com, “vapid.” She sounded inane as she walked the icy grounds of the death camp. “Wow,” she said. “Unbelievable … wow … wow … unbelievable …”
Granted, the sight of ovens used to dispose of human beings challenges description, but as she interviewed Wiesel, Oprah began to sound like Little Miss Echo:
WIESEL: There were three to a bunk.
OPRAH: Three to a bunk …
WIESEL: Straw.
OPRAH: Straw …
WIESEL: There were trees.
OPRAH: There were trees.
WIESEL: But we didn’t look at them.
OPRAH: But you didn’t look at them.
She frequently repeats what her guests say as if she is a Berlitz translator.
Oprah later sold DVDs of her trip with Wiesel at The Oprah Store across the street from her studio, for thirty dollars apiece, prompting one critic to call it “Holocash.”
During her speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, she talked about the devastation of concentration camps and then, inexplicably, segued into how hard it was to be famous and go to the bathroom in public. She said she had used the restroom earlier in the day and the person in the next stall had said, “You pee like a horse.” After that, Oprah told the crowd, who had come to donate money in remembrance of the six million Jews who’d perished in death camps, that she had decided from now on to put lots of paper in the toilet to dampen the sound of her peeing. Robert Feder wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that it was “one of the most outrageous utterances” of the year.
“I don’t know what possesses Oprah to talk like that at the most inappropriate times,” said Jewette Battles, who helped arrange Oprah’s 1988 visit to Kosciusko. “She did something similar when she came back here to dedicate the Oprah Winfrey Road.… The whole town turned out to celebrate her on Oprah Winfrey Day and the mayor gave her a key to the city. It was a very big deal.… She’s the biggest thing to come out of Mississippi since Elvis Presley. So when she got up on the stage of the Attala County Coliseum everyone was cheering, so happy she was there and so proud of her.… At first she made the crowd laugh and … then all of a sudden she started performing a piece about a slave girl and the plantation mistress who made her drink urine.… I don’t know where the urine thing came from—if it was something from the book Jubilee or what—but people were shocked into absolute silence.… I did not understand Oprah’s purpose except to say, ‘Look at me now. I’m on top.… ’ And if that’s what it was, who’s to blame her? It’s hard to be black and poor in America, but I wondered later if she didn’t do that performance to throw up slavery to us as a part of Mississippi’s awful past.… Even though she’s five generations removed from slavery and was much too young to be mistreated when she was here as a child.… Besides, things have changed in Mississippi over the years.… We have overcome.… There’s no sense in rubbing our noses in it now.”
There are signs in the airport in Jackson, one and a half hours north of Kosciusko, that announce, “No Blacks. No Whites. Just the Blues,” and the T-shirts on sale inform visitors “Yes, We Wear Shoes Down Here. Sometimes Even Cleats.”
On her visit home on June 4, 1988, Oprah wore a bright turquoise silk dress from The Forgotten Woman, a label for large sizes. She was accompanied by her mother; her father and stepmother; Stedman; her personal secretary, Beverly Coleman; her attorney,